Everything in Nothing

So, I've been rather enamored recently with the various concepts of nothing that arise in Shakespeare. William, of course, means for us to read much into his time's pronunciation of the word and its connotation of hearsay and gossip, but I think he also is trying to address something much deeper and more profound.

The classic miracle, for instance, is the ability to create something of nothing. Genesis, transubstantiation, and, most importantly, our own imaginative faculty, are all miraculous examples of the Shakespearean concept of nothing. Goddard's criticism argues that within NOTHING is the idea of the actual and the possible, the "two constituents of the imagination" "In this realm," says Goddard, "are all the deeds that were not done when the other choice was made, all the roads that were not traveled when the other fork was taken, all the life that did not come into existence when its seeds failed to germinate."

It's as if Shakespeare asks the questions of Descartes--what is real? What is fact? Can I trust my senses? If not, what do I trust?--and comes to a unique and profoundly mythological conclusion. "It matters not," Shakespeare says, for "the poet's pen...gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." Our ability to trust our senses and our world is inconsequential, for we can live in a world of pure creativity through imagination.

And, indeed, imagination seems to be Shakespeare's most powerfully moving character. Lear's exhortation that "nothing will come of nothing" rings true in Shakespeare's grand sense, for encapsulated in the concept of nothing is the entire realm of possibility. For Cordelia, Goddard says, "her whole spiritual inheritance came from nothing."

"Nothing" then seems to be a stand in for the creative faculty of the imagination.

Let us at least put our lands in order

I like Frye's idea that tragedy and comedy are somehow enclosed in each other. It seems to me that Shakespeare's last four plays  extend upon that concept, attempting to reflect on that fact that every comedy contains possible tragedy, and every tragedy can possibly turn to comedy. The romances show darkly comic situations, misunderstandings that lead to tragic outcomes of oedipal significance, yet they still manage to end with some form of cathartic, redemptive power.

Shakespeare in Lear shows the greatest depth of despair that can be had on this world. In Hamlet he confronts the problems of evil head on. In Macbeth he explores the corruption that follows lust for power. Everywhere Shakespeare asks why. Why do we continue with this existence if it can lead to such overwhelming sorrow? Some may argue that the comedies provide answers, their "happy" endings providing hope to life. This hope, however, hangs by a thread of chance, as every comedy contains tragedy within.

It is in the romances, then, that Shakespeare finds his profoundly mythological answer. For although comedy escapes being tragedy by only chance, tragedy can also be transformed to comedy. The romances attempt to unveil this entire cycle, showing an eternal recurrence, a mixture of possibilities that provide hope that man might achieve either the light or the dark

History and Myth

To say I'm way behind on blogging is like claiming that Cleopatra is "only a little needy"....gross understatement. Anyways, here goes.

I found that Antony and Cleopatra provided the best mix of tragedy, comedy and history that I've read thus far. In Egypt (Cleopatra) and Rome (Antony and then Octavius) we have figures of such historical importance that they are raised nearly to the level of myth just by how their short time on earth shaped the destiny of western civilization, yet Shakespeare manages to both demythologize Caesar Augustus and reshape they mythology of Antony and Cleopatra, elevating them to god'like status whilst using the prodding of comedy to question whether they deserve that distinction.

As we discussed in class, the play and its characters are very much separated into Egypt and Rome. Rome is historical, linear, rational. Rome is passionless ambition, duty, the occident. Egypt is the orient, exotic, erotic and without rhyme or reason.

It is little wonder that Eliot made a nod to Cleopatra in The Wasteland. The second section, whose title, "A Game of Chess", is in itself a nod to machinations of history, explores one distinction that Egypt and Rome embody, the difference between historical and mythological time. "Hurry up please, it's time" says Eliot's Cockney woman at the end, mirroring the perception of Rome, describing a time that presses forward. For Octavius and his ilk time is a constant, linear thing moving inexorably through history. For Cleopatra, however, and, I think, for Eliot, time is not a linear matter. It is cyclic, it is an eternal recurrence. Cleopatra is "fluid" because she is a recurrence of Isis, of the Mother Goddess, and Antony, although he seems to shed his herculean ancestry as he removes the fetters of his Roman past, is also a reincarnation of Hercules. Both are, in the end, profoundly mythological.

Mythology in As You Like it

So, I've been falling a little behind with this blogging bit. Ah well.

I found the dichotomy between nature and fortune in As You Like It particularly fascinating. It seems Shakespeare is confronting the classic pastoral myth. He creates a distinction between the gifts of fortune and the gifts of nature, much as there is a boundary between the urban court and the forest of Arden. Celia and Rosalind's conversation in act II on how these gifts are misplaced show the issue with attributing such mythic qualities to the pastoral scene. Nature can give great gifts, as it has to both Rosalind and Celia, but without the gift of fortune, without the urban, these gifts are often left by the wayside, unused or unwanted.

It also seems that Shakespeare again confronts the artifice of the play in As You Like It. This time, the bard through Jaques brings this questioning of reality to the metaphysical level. If "All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players," of what consequence is free will? What, if any, is humanity's place in the greater scheme? In ACT IV we see yet another play within a play, Rosalinde's charade as Ganymede with Orlando. We perceive the artifice, we contemplate how the play acts as a mirror for real experience, yet Shakespeare attempts to apply this to the greater play, to life.  As in A Midsummer Nights Dream, The lower rungs of the mythical ladder are reflections of those above. "The best in these are but shadows." Shakespeare questions whether we are but a shadow, and if so, what are we shadows of? Like Plato's cave, are our daily lives only a shadow of some higher, purer truth. If so, what is the purpose of life, and what is the purpose of the play?

" Why he's a regular Prince Myshkin"

Hamlet is Ivan, Ivan is Hamlet.

Should I chose a sacred text, my personal scripture, a text which inspires in me the true depth of emotion that literature (and myth) ought to provoke,  I would chose The Brothers Karamzov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Not for nothing does Vonnegut's Mr. Rosewater say that everything one needs to know about life can be found within its pages. Ivan, Alyosha, Mitya and Smerdyakov evoke emotions and motivations so terrifyingly real that they strike a bitter chord with all that is human within each of us (or, at very least, within me). Freud and Nietsche felt that bite, felt it and reveled in it, for Dostoevsky's great gift, much like Shakespeare's, was his ability to portray emotions so deep and so ingrained in mankind that they seem almost timeless, almost mythical.

So, it should come as no surprise (though it often does) that the Shakespeare and Dostoevsky often seem to express the same myth, the same deeply entrancing emotion. In fact, as I read A Midsummer Night's Dream I heard echoes of Brothers K., most notably Mitya as he said "God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." Titania and Oberon, in being "the parents and the original" elevate to a supernatural plain the struggles of Love. Similarly, Dmitri, Alyosha, Ivan and Smerdyakov elucidate in their quarrels the titanic battle between human rationality and spirituality. In each, supernatural occurrences define and describe the troubles of humanity.

Take for example three of Dostoevsky's most noted characters: Alyosha Karamazov, Prince Myshkin the Idiot and the depraved underground man. Each in his own right parallels Tarquin or Adonis. Each spurns a women, often the best of the breed, for different reasons: the underground man for his own depravity, Myshkin out of selfless naivette and Alyosha in his search for higher meaning. Each is hunting his own personal boar, and each, with the possible exception of Alyosha, is gored.

It's odd, almost, this comparison, for although Myshkin is the best man of the three, he ends up in the worst position. A moments hesitation, caused by the deep goodness in his nature and his pity for Nastasya, robbed him of happiness with Aglaia and condemns him to a life of insanity. In many ways Myshkin is the christ child in a society that can no longer tolerate him or the mother goddess. As with the Grand Inquisitor of the Brothers Karamazov, the Russia Myshkin finds may profess a love of simple goodness, but in its essence it spurns such perfection.

In the Underground Man we find a stunning reversal of this situation. Liza, who at once represents Russia, womankind and humanity, is taken in and then betrayed by the Underground Man, who openly displays what the rest of society tries to hide: the underlying depravity of the modern human condition. "As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves."  The Underground Man is Tarquin without a conscience, but he is also a reflection of his society. Liza, the downtrodden modern version of the Mother Goddess, is disgraced not by disinterested naievette, as is Venus, or by the blinding pangs of passion, as Lucrece, but rather by the malice of the modern man attempting to come to terms with modernity.

Alyosha, youngest of the sordid, sensual Karamazovs, is the last of Dostoevsky's characters to spurn a woman. He choses the religious life over that of love, but is saved, in a sense, by Father Zosima, who tells him to enter the world. Alyosha ends his story, after surviving the travails of modern life and keeping his sense of self amidst the nihilism of Ivan, sensuality of Dimitri and depravity of Smerdyakov, by walking down the street with a gaggle of school children. It seems he is saying after the wasteland "let us at least put our lands in order."

Hopefully I'll have some time to expand on this later, but this should do for now.

Initial thoughts on the bard

I have only ever kissed one man.

I assure you, it was for a good reason, though my fiance remains skeptical. The vaunted kiss took place at a Lutheran bible camp as I performed, with my best friend Mark, a two man version of Romeo and Juliet (with some humerous alterations).

Whether through misquotation ("a nose by any other name would still smell"), hyperbole ("SWEAR NOT BY THE MOON!") or outright slander ("by yonder blessed virgin I swear") Mark and I managed to slay the typical conventions of Shakespearean acting. My point in this blog, however, is that we also managed to slay the audience.

 Perhaps performance adds a vital component to the concept of "mything shakespeare". Shakespeare, you see, apart from his stunning ability to add to our lexicon and vividly describe and orchestrate the human condition in his works also seems to have set the eternal standard for acting. Playing Richard III or Henry V seems to be an appropriate Everest for any budding actor, and to attempt the part of Hamlet is often described as akin to attempting the part of God.

So why is Shakespeare even today considered the pinnacle of an actor's repertoire?  I'd argue that it has something to do with the myth of Shakespeare, the ever present pressure his plays retain on our collective consciousness. Shakespeare was not great merely because he wrote beautifully. His plays speak so deeply because they effectively address a deep part of human nature. Hamlet's existential angst, Romeo's ill-fated love, Hermia's jealousy--all reflect basic passions that oft inflict the human soul. To act Shakespeare is to act human, all too human. And so, in playing these parts, modern actors, though they come from a different age, must attach themselves at the roots of human emotion and participate deeply with the characters on the page in order to make them truly appear on the stage.

Mark and I, in our little production, managed only the most basic rendition of Shakespeare's mastery of human emotion. We were able to use the myth he has passed down to inspire some laughter, a few snickers and a couple of horrified camp director's. Even this marginal accomplishment, however, showed me that often, to truly understand the power of the bard, one must play the part.


Videos from the Reduced Shakespeare Company's performance of Romeo and Juliet